The pessimistic energy we give to thoughts and rants about how wrong everything is eclipses our view of the conditions for constructive change that are there and waiting - likely screaming at some level - to be known and cultivated. So maybe we should think good thoughts, snap ourselves right out of the shitstorm we're in, visualize our way into sunny skies mental health hard bodies reliable relationships constant confidence nice bosses fair pay sane presidents no regrets immortality and baby bunnies...
No. Eff that positive psychology shite.
There's a fine place for positive psychology, but not in the context of this post... Not in the context of working our way through serious and/or habitually hard times. The science of positive psychology, misinterpreted and misapplied, can amount to hyper-popular profit-making passive-producing approaches and mantras around the idea that suffering is somehow avoidable and requires swift correction.
Listen... If things seem wrong - if you feel sad angry afraid betrayed cheated embarrassed vulnerable or violated - I say it's because you care about something very much. In fact, I guarantee it. Now you may not be communicating or acting skillfully about what wrong thing is happening to threaten what you care about, and we can and must talk about that, but your negative experience of this moment situation or pattern in your life is perfectly good and sane and possibly workable, and your negative feelings around it should be met and mined for their brilliant intelligence (aka tragic logic).
Please consider not dimming or dumbing down the way forward by too quickly throwing good thoughts about happier times at your suffering - or anyone else's for that matter. Optimism and pessimism are flip sides of the same coin. They eclipse reality, whatever that is, equally tragically well and interfere with the recognition of creative possibilities you've been longing for. It's as if we think those possibilities are somewhere other than right in the middle of the shitstorm we're in...
To discover the way forward hiding in painful plain sight, be literal about the shitstorm you're in, especially if it's really bad. See hear smell taste and touch exactly how wrong the weather is. Don't think about it as much as feel it. And tell someone who isn't afraid of you, who trusts that you know yourself best despite the current crazy you're manifesting, all about it. Don't abandon this wrong moment or phase for any other one, past or future. Stay safe and stay with what's happening - stay with yourself - until things calm a bit and logic, tenderness, and possibility become apparent.
They will, I promise. They can't not.